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(After 999 Deaths, I Refuse to Save the World)
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Five hours had passed since Kael incinerated the Loop Enforcers.
The sky hadn't returned to normal. Instead, it twitched—as if the very code of reality was glitching.
Birds flew in reverse. A child laughed in the distance… before being unborn mid-sound. The town clock struck 13, then melted.
Kael stood at the border of Elyria, watching the fractured sky like a man staring into the eye of a familiar monster.
Beside him, Lyra had fallen into a deep sleep—too deep. The kind induced by loop echoes infecting unprotected minds.
He'd seen it before.
But he'd never seen what came next.
---
"He exists outside the record."
The voice was not human.
It didn't come from a direction.
It came from beneath time.
Kael turned sharply, hand raised, ready to burn whatever it was into dust.
A door appeared in the middle of the forest clearing—floating, cracked, and upside-down. From behind it, came laughter. Soft, elegant, and cruel.
Then it opened.
And three beings stepped out, each draped in shifting robes made of time-fractals—faces hidden behind masks carved with moving constellations.
Their feet didn't touch the ground. Their presence aged the trees nearby. One oak turned to ash in seconds.
Kael's heart skipped.
He knew them.
> The Chronovore Nobility.
The myth. The ones who fed on broken loops.
The so-called Time Devils.
---
"Greetings, Kael Arden," the lead one said in a voice made of overlapping centuries. "We've watched you die. Watched you scream. Watched you fail."
Kael said nothing, but his stance tightened.
The second Devil hovered forward, tilting its head. "This is your thousandth loop. That means you're now a 'complete sequence'. No longer a variable."
The third one chuckled.
> "You're eligible for collection."
Kael's fist crackled with energy—but the Time Devils didn't flinch. They weren't bound to the world's rules. They weren't part of the System.
They were older. Higher.
> "What do you want?" Kael growled.
The first Devil answered, "To offer you a gift."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "A gift?"
The Devil smiled under its mask.
> "You've glitched through time long enough. You've seen truths mortals shouldn't. We offer you clarity, Kael Arden… in exchange for your soul's imprint."
> "Accept our mark, and we will show you the ones who built this cursed Loop."
---
Kael didn't answer.
But his mind flashed back—
To the System Architects.
Faceless, formless entities that even the Enforcers feared.
The ones who reset the world after each of his deaths, feeding on his suffering to fuel something far bigger.
> "You know who created the System?" he asked cautiously.
The third Devil nodded. "We know their true names. Their home. Their plan."
The first Devil added, "They're not gods, Kael. They're from the Eris Vortex—a civilization that collapsed your timeline to test weaponized fate loops."
Kael's blood turned cold.
> So the Loop wasn't divine. It was a prison built by higher beings from another broken timeline.
---
> "And what happens if I say no?"
The air grew darker.
The second Devil's mask glowed a sickly blue.
> "Then we devour your corrupted existence. You're leaking into time's bloodstream. You're a cancer."
Kael smirked coldly.
> "Guess what happens to predators who try to eat a burning star?"
He raised his hand and unleashed a compressed memory strike—a forbidden magic built from 300 overlapping deaths where he was a Worldkiller.
The energy ripped through the clearing—
—only to stop, frozen mid-air.
Time had been paused.
The Devils weren't reacting. They were simply… watching.
And behind them, the air cracked again.
---
A new presence stepped through the shattered sky.
A woman—no, a godlike being—with six golden eyes, wings of mirrors, and a crown that bled clock hands.
> "You're not the only one breaking out, Kael," she said, smiling like someone who had already lived the end.
> "I'm called Virelya, Herald of the Forgotten Loop. And I've come to recruit you… or erase you."
---
Kael didn't move.
Not when the Time Devils were bowing.
Not when the world was now clearly beyond repair.
Not when Lyra started whispering names from old timelines in her sleep—names that Kael had never told her.
---
He was now hunted by System Enforcers.
Tracked by Time Devils.
Offered alliances by multiversal beings.
And something inside Lyra was beginning to awaken.
Something… old.
Something that shouldn't exist in this world at all.
---
Kael looked at the three Devils. Then at Virelya. Then at the sky, which now had two suns.
> "You all want something from me," he said quietly.
"But I want only one thing…"
His eyes glowed black and gold.
> "I want the name of the one who created the first Loop.
And when I get it…"
"I'll kill the concept of time itself."
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[End of Chapter 3]
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To be continued.....